


Ictus

by athoroughlybakedpotato (acommontater)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Serious Injuries, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:44:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acommontater/pseuds/athoroughlybakedpotato
Summary: ictus /ˈɪktəs/-From the Latin for strike or blowthe pulse(medicine) A sudden attack, blow, stroke, or seizure, as in a sunstroke, the sting of an insect, pulsation of an artery, etc.(prosody) The stress of voice laid upon an accented syllable of a word.(music) In conducting, the indication of a musical event, most often the beat of the tempo or the entry of a section of the orchestra.Viktor has fallen three times in ways that changed his life.





	Ictus


    Let it be forgotten as a flower is forgotten,
    Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold.
    Let it be forgotten forever and ever.
    Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
    
    If anyone asks, say it was forgotten,
    Long and long ago.
    As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed foot-fall
    In a long forgotten snow.  
      
    [-Sara Teasdale](http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=15655&RF=1)

 

Viktor is forgetful- mostly a quirk that has faded into the background for Yuuri.

It’s second nature now to grab Viktor’s keys and phone on their way out the door and to provide gentle prompts in the middle of conversations when Viktor suddenly changes topics.

Viktor is meticulous in putting everything into planners and calendars- for longer term planning- and post-it notes around the house. Yuuri finds them stuck to the refrigerator and cabinets in the kitchen (‘buy eggs!!!’ And ‘get new coffee grinder’, respectively.) and on the mirror in the bathroom (on days where Viktor has to be at the rink earlier than Yuuri, he leaves notes that say ‘i love you!’ in various languages and a clumsy heart.)

 

/ 

 

When Yuuri is sixteen, he watches the European Championships with baited breath.

Viktor hasn’t won gold yet, here or at Worlds, but he’s made the podium the last two years and Yuuri cheers him on hopefully. He watches the other skaters attentively despite the early hours, but sits up straighter when Viktor appears rinkside.

Viktor is talking to his coach, nodding seriously at something Coach Feltsman is saying. His costume in beautiful, catching the light on the curves of his body as he turns, his hair done up in pinned up braids that coil around his head in an echo of a pattern with bright ribbon matching his costume woven through the locks of hair. Yuuri sighs and leans his chin on his palm as he watches Viktor smile and wave as he takes the ice.

His music this year is a study in contrasts- moments of lightness and dancing against dark heavy undertones that never truly fade out. Viktor is clearly feeding off of the crowd, unable to hide a grin as he gets near to the audience during  a pass. Yuuri is enraptured, unable to look away.

Viktor sets himself up for what Yuuri knows should be a quad flip. As soon as Viktor is taking off Yuuri can tell something is wrong. 

Viktor falls, awkwardly slamming into the boards before he hits the ice so hard his head bounces sickeningly. The music continues for a few seconds as everyone waits with baited breath to see if he will get up.

Yuuri is clutching the edge of the table so hard his knuckles ache. 

Viktor suddenly looks very small against the expanse of the ice. 

The music cuts off abruptly and suddenly the rink is a flurry of motion. Medics rush onto the ice and there is a short scrum as Viktor (so still that Yuuri thinks he might be sick) is strapped into a stretcher and removed from the ice. The audience is still and silent, unsure. Yuuri thinks that the parting shot of the twilight silver and bright ribbons trailing from Viktor’s head will be seared into his eyes forever. 

 

/ 

 

Viktor has shelves and shelves of books in his apartment, but Yuuri never sees him read any. Books mostly in Russian, but novels in English, French, and a smattering of other languages have their own shelves as well. Yuuri borrows some of the English ones and notices that there’s a film of dust over the top, and when he checks it’s the same even layer across all the shelves.

He chalks it up to Viktor being in Japan for most of the past year. 

 

/ 

 

 When Yuuri is eighteen, he moves to America, changes training locations, starts college, and is very relieved that Viktor Nikiforov is apparently alive after over three months of total social media silence. 

It’s one tweet, in Russian, thanking fans for their support and that he’s okay, accompanied by a picture of Makkachin curled up on the sofa by his feet (#mybiggestfan) one elevated ankle in an ace bandage. It loosens something clutched tight in Yuuri’s chest that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. 

Viktor is okay, so Yuuri can be okay too. It eases some of the homesickness that threatens to drown him some days as he texts Yuuko about the tweet and picture. 

 

/ 

 

Viktor’s eyebrows are pinched tightly together by the end of practice. 

 

“Vitya, are you alright?” 

 

“Fine. That was beautiful, but watch…” Viktor screws his eyes shut and cuts off what he was saying with a sharp inhale. Yuuri waits for a beat with trepidation- had he done something wrong? Was Viktor mad at him or something else? “...watch transition out of your step sequence.” Viktor finishes finally, rubbing at his temple. 

Yuuri hesitates for a moment before reaching out to cup Viktor’s jaw in his palm. Some of the tension seems to bleed out of Viktor at his touch. 

“Vitya…” 

“I am fine, I promise, my Yuuri. I’m just have small headache.” Viktor presses a kiss to his palm and tries to smile winningly at him, but Yuuri can see the corners of his eyes and mouth tense with pain.

Yuuri resists rolling his eyes. 

“I am going to do a cool-down while  _ you _ go sit in the locker room and then we are going home.” 

V iktor opens his mouth to protest- they still have the rink for another forty minutes- but Yuuri presses a finger to his lips and frowns. Viktor huffs out a sigh and nods grudgingly. Yuuri smiles at him and then scoots away to begin his cool-down. When they get home, Viktor takes some medication (different from the ones on his daily pinging notifications) and lays down in the bedroom with the blackout curtains pulled shut. Yuuri showers and then wakes Viktor up for dinner of leftover soup.

They go to bed early, curled together, Viktor burying his face in Yuuri shoulder and Yuuri stroking a sleepy hand through his hair. 

 

/ 

 

When Viktor is twenty, he falls during a competition and doesn’t get up. 

When he does wake up, he finds himself in a hospital bed, with Yakov asleep in a chair by the wall. (He experiences a moment of deja vu, memories of a fall in practice years earlier overlapping for nauseatingly long second.) There’s a tube on his face and he reaches up to touch it, but misses and hits his forehead instead. 

He discovers that there are bandages on his head and, on further exploration, that his hair is gone. 

 

/ 

 

The first time Yuuri sees Viktor with short hair is at the same time as the rest of the world, when he’d stepped onto the ice for his short program in the Cup of China a full season after his terrible fall. 

Grainy videos and photos from a distance had fans arguing for months about his hair- the smaller competitions Viktor had been using for warm-ups and to regain his footing on the international stage weren’t widely broadcast the same as the bigger competitions were, so it had only been speculation up until that moment. Viktor had been notoriously dodgy of fans and paparazzi for a while now, apparently this being why. 

Yuuri feels like the breath has been knocked out of him with the sweep of Viktor’s hair against his sharp cheekbones and even sharper smile. 

Viktor takes no prisoners that season. Yuuri watches the gold medals stack up and uses them as tally marks for how far he still has to go. 

 

/ 

 

Some days Viktor trails off in the middle of sentences until Yuuri catches his attention again and he asks what they’d been talking about. 

Viktor sets a million alarms on his phone with reminders for everything from important meeting, his medication, and their international flights, to feeding Makkachin and himself. He keeps little notebooks on him at all times in case he has a day when the blue light of his phone is painful or the texture of the pen and paper is just better. 

Yuuri double checks his bags for him before they leave the apartment and Viktor picks out coordinating outfits for them most days.

They learn to balance each other out gradually. 

 

/ 

 

Viktor choreographs on the ice to tell his stories and at home he rests his head on Yuuri’s chest and listens as Yuuri reads aloud from their novel selection of the week (or month depending on how much time they have). It helps Yuuri’s Cyrillic reading skills and lets Viktor enjoy some of the books in his collection he couldn’t find on audiobook. (He loves reading, loved reading, but it is more often than not an exercise in frustration these days.) 

Sometimes, he’ll pull Yuuri into and impromptu dance around the apartment. Waltzing helps him remember old French love poems that he’d memorized in school, and he enjoys how Yuuri flushes when he whispers them into his ear.

Viktor gets very good- well, much much better- at cooking, because it is so much easier to care about what you’re making when it’s for your lovely fiance. Youtube tutorials are a blessing, as is the look on Yuuri’s face when he gets home from a particularly brutal dance practice to find Viktor finishing putting dinner on the table. 

 

/ 

 

Balancing the bad days is harder, but practice helps. 

Sometimes Viktor finds it simply to exhausting to get out of bed and Yuuri is tense and snappy over some thought that has been overworked and left to rise. There are arguments and tears, but always love at the end of the day. 

 

/ 

 

For every fall they rise back up and find their rhythm again. It gets easier each time.

**Author's Note:**

> I hc that Viktor has had at least one major injury in his career- partly bc it's not common for skaters to have careers without injury, and partly bc it's something he points out with Yuuri, but sounds like he doesn't count himself to be so lucky. ("You're younger than me, and you've never had a major injury...") It's isn't really focused on in detail in this fic, but for my backstory purposes, prior to the fall he takes in-fic he had at least one milder (recognized) concussion years earlier in an off-season (plus probably a handful+ of other smaller head traumas from falls. One does not become known for quads without taking some spills).
> 
> Some common long-term side effects of concussions can be trouble with attention span, forgetfulness, depression, mood swings, and headaches. Having previous head trauma makes an individual more vulnerable to it happening again. Apart from the more obvious joint/bone injuries, head injuries are common in skating (thought not necessarily severe).
> 
> To learn more about this, some reading:  
> http://www.stopsportsinjuries.org/STOP/STOP/Prevent_Injuries/Figure_Skating_Injury_Prevention.aspx  
> https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/19/ice-skating-and-concussions-ashley-wagner-lived-in-silent-terror-after-head-injury/  
> https://www.today.com/health/figure-skatings-high-flying-beauty-blurs-hazardous-side-effect-2D12112777


End file.
